In Conversation: Sophie Mackintosh | The Water Cure

Watch Sophie Mackinstosh discuss her debut novel 'The Water Cure' which has been longlisted for the Man Booker prize 2018, at Waterstones in Covent Garden. Sophie does a reading for us followed by a talk about how she came to write this extraordinary novel and the creative process behind it.

'Immensely assured, calmly devastating. This is a gem of a novel and I was bowled over by it' - Katherine Angel, author of Unmastered

'Eerie, electric, beautiful. It rushes you through to the end on a tide of tension and closely held panic. I loved this book' - Daisy Johnson, author of Fen

'Creepy and delightful - it has a pinch of Shirley Jackson, a dash of chlorine, and an essence all of its own' - Rowan Hisayo Buchanan, author of Harmless Like You

Imagine a world very close to our own: where women are not safe in their bodies, where desperate measures are required to raise a daughter. This is the story of Grace, Lia and Sky, kept apart from the world for their own good and taught the terrible things that every woman must learn about love. And it is the story of the men who come to find them - three strangers washed up by the sea, their gazes hungry and insistent, trailing desire and destruction in their wake.

The Water Cure is a fever dream, a blazing vision of suffering, sisterhood and transformation.

'Otherworldly, brutal and poetic: a feminist fable set by the sea, a utopia gone awry, a female Lord of the Flies. It transported me, savaged me, filled me with hope and fear. It felt like a book I'd been waiting to read for a long time' Emma Jane Unsworth, author of Animals